Grand Eventure Xmas Date with Brady and Gaige - Ashdown Gorge

What a beautiful day in an awesome place with some of our favorite peoples.  Bean joined us for this edventure too!  He had never been and it's too good not to share!  We got off to a rough start with our car dying and having to take it in and trade to the big truck.  But we persevered and didn't let that deter us.  We drove up to pick up Brady, stopped for gas and a favorite candy bar to get us started.  Then we slid down Lance's super steep trail and into the Gorge.  The water was cold and it felt good on this warm day.  We did the hike from the bottom up to Lake Creek and Rattlesnake waterfalls and back.  We wanted to get in 10 miles for Brady's hiking merit badge and ended up having to add a little bit of the Coal Creek Trail to it at the end to make it long enough.  We had a great day and saw so much beautiful scenery including Flanigan Arch and Tom's Head.  Lou and Bryan treated us to a home made egg roll dinner when we got back which was so good!  It was a great grand edventure!  This is one of our favorite all time hikes.  We have wanted to share it with some of the grand kids!

Grand Edventure Xmas date with 4 boys!

We got the boys (Zade, Koen, Noah and Brenden) together for their Christmas edventure date.  I had to go and fetch Noah in Cedar to make it happen.  (Unfortunately Kai was with his dad and couldn't come.)  First stop was Smith's where everyone chose their dinner - Lunchable of their choice.  Then we headed to Pine Valley and biked to our picnic spot at the top campsite riding up the paved Santa Clara River Trail.  It was pretty hard work for them, so we made stops along the trail to rest and enjoy the scenery.  After dinner we took a little hike up the stream and tried the watercress!  (I think they pretended to like it!) Then we loaded back up and this time rode down the road.  It was down hill and we made much better time!  They were so excited to think they reached 22.2 mph.  I was proud of them.  It was a pretty hard uphill ride for them on the way up! We stopped in at Arctic Circle for ice cream and fun when we got back to town...and then it was time to get them home to bed.  Noah was spending the night with us since it was too late to take him back that night.  G'pa took the other boys home and Noah and I played some checkers.  Earlier after I picked him up and before we G'pa got the other boys picked up I taught him how to play King's Corner...and he beat me in best of five games! 

These guys had fun trying on Grandpa's signature hat!  They also had fun just jabbering all the way up and back and keeping us entertained with riddles and jokes!  They are such a fun group!

Happy #40 Lance!

Juge surprised Lance with a Sheffield/Lillywhite surprise birthday BBQ for his 40th!  He was pleasantly surprised!  It was a really fun evening with wonderful food, perfect backyard Cedar City weather, lots of great people to visit with and Lance properly surprised and happy with the whole thing!  Juge worked very hard and was probably too exhausted to enjoy it, but the rest of us surely did!  Happy Birthday Lance!  We love you and wish you a wonderful coming year!

Madi - #8 birthday and baptism visit

What a fun little trip to enjoy special days with Madi and family. Friday, June 1st, was Madi's 8th birthday and she was baptized and confirmed on Saturday. We partied for her birthday by opening presents for breakfast, going out for a sushi dinner deluxe complete with a flaming sushi roll to blow out!  Then we went back home to blow out candles on the birthday pies!

We also (Friday afternoon) took the 3 older girls to the Tracy Aviary.  It was a beautiful place with so many interesting birds to see and learn about.  We had fun going into an indoor section that was like a rain forest for birds and one indoor section about South American birds.  We also went to a bird show, the Owl Forest (Madi's favorite bird) and lots of other areas with cool birds to see!  It was a little cool in the earlier part of the day, but other than feeling a little frozen sometimes, we had a good time at the aviary and fun at the park afterwards!  It was our Christmas Edventure date outing!

Saturday, after the baptism, we had a beautiful brunch with all of the family up that way.  We always enjoy spending time with Brynn's family too.

We are so  pleased that Madi has chosen to take this most important covenant step.  We are so happy she has a family to teach her the gospel and help her participate in it.  

Browse to Anderson Valley with Bean

Oh what a hike!  It's one of those that I feel like doing like a little kid and saying, "Are we there yet?"  I love it when we get there, but it is a killer with a LOT of elevation gain over a short distance...but it is totally worth it when you get there.  We sort of got of to a late start and then lost the trail a little and did some back tracking.  After a lunch stop with the steepest part yet to go I secretly wondered if we should just call it and head back.  But we pressed on and made it up to see the little dilapidated cabin.  I just kept thinking that I may just be too old to do this again and better do it now as a final time!  We took a little nap up there, enjoyed what there was to see and then came down...which is almost as bad except you can at least breathe.  When we got to the bottom we visited with the people who were camping at the trailhead.  We had seen them before on horseback and then they passed us going up.  They were very friendly and even shared some leftover Dutch Oven cobbler with us which made me feel a whole lot better!  It was a great hike...and I don't want to do it again for a while, maybe never.  I'm glad we did it then because it is so dry now that the forest service has locked the gate on that area unless we get some "significant rains."  We did it just in time! 

Jacob Lake - North Rim - Christmas present redeemed!

Just before school got out Paul and I decided we just couldn't wait any longer to get out!  We were feeling a bit too lazy to get everything together to camp and went the easy way by redeeming out Christmas gift cert. from the kids to Jacob Lake.  We wanted to get the most value and it was cheaper to stay in one of the tiny cabins this time of year...and I have always wanted to, so that worked out too!  We went over on a Friday afternoon and checked in and then drove over toward North Rim of the Grand Canyon to explore some.  We took a dirt road we just barely explored before and drove to see some amazing vistas.  It's actually just outside the canyon in the Saddle Mountain Wilderness area I believe.  It was so beautiful. We parked and walked around by the Nankoweap trail for a bit.  Then it was time to get back. We had a great dinner and evening forest walk...so lovely.  In the morning we decided to explore some other new places and found some short hikes in the canyon that we had never done before.  It was so much fun!  We did Cape Final, Walhalla Ruin, Cliff Spring Trail, and drove out to Point Imperial and looked around.  We tried not to do any long hard trails because of Paul's sore foot, but did these short, less strenuous ones. It turned out just right!  We had a full day of it and then headed home happy and well fed!

Do not tell hike in Browse - Hidden Waterfall

Paul, Bean and I took a Saturday hike that was all new to us.  Supe and Lance call it a secret hike, so I can't share it publicly.  It was not too long, a little steep at the end and absolutely beautiful!  It's up by Browse and takes you down to the river and to a beautiful waterfall a bit like Kanara Creek.  Someone has done a lot of work clearing the trail down to it otherwise it would just be a total bushwhack job.  We enjoyed the beautiful views of Kolob, the Big Sequoia, the flowers blooming and just the whole beautiful place! I need to go back and get all of the way into the water before it dries up this hot summer.

Some History of the Browse Guard Station - much of this is on the sign that some fool shot a hole through.

LOCATION

37° 23' 7.99" North Latitude,   113° 21' 11.02" West Longitude 
37.3856° North Latitude,   113.3531° West Longitude 
6,095 feet (1,858 meters) elevation 

Township, Range, Section:   T39S, R13W, S19 

HISTORY

This site was first developed in 1921 as the 179-acre Mill Creek Browse Experimental Range with an enclosure to study the use of browse vegetation as summer forage for cattle. 

Two years later, a small cabin was built. 

Grazing of cattle was discontinued there in 1929 but, four years later, the Forest Supervisor approved construction of four exclosures (areas fenced to keep out wildlife and stock) to support deer management studies. 

In 1934, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built a Plan 5 guard station and a Plan 70 outhouse; the 1923 cabin became a woodshed/storeroom. Regional landscape architect H. L. Curtiss prepared a landscape plan that included wild grape, native grasses, spruce, cedar, rose, willows, snowberry, apple trees, an irrigation ditch, sidewalks and parking for four cars. 

Despite these early improvements, the site was not formally withdrawn until 7/7/1953 and again in 1959. The Forest Service recommended the 1959 withdrawal (120 acres) be released in 1986. 

Beginning in 1960, the Forest Service shared the guard station with the Utah Fish and Game Department for use as seasonal housing. The site was intact with its three buildings and corral when the Sequoia Fire of 2002 swept through the canyon. Remarkably, everything around the station burned but the buildings were unharmed, thanks to clearing of flammable materials the previous year. Subsequent rains on the fire-damaged land led to a mudslide, flooding, and loss of the 1923 shed. 

A restoration plan was developed in 1996 and the following year, the Utah State Historic Preservation Office concurred with the Forest's determination that the Browse Guard Station is eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places.